Latest KFF Health News Stories
Family Planning A Cost-Effective Strategy To Reduce Poverty, Conflict And Environmental Damage
In his New York Times column, Nicholas Kristof writes that family planning is “a solution to many of the global problems that confront us, from climate change to poverty to civil wars,” but that it “has been a victim of America’s religious wars” and is “starved of resources.” Kristof discusses the potential impacts of overpopulation as the global population surpasses seven billion and adds, “What’s needed isn’t just birth control pills or IUDs. It’s also girls’ education and women’s rights — starting with an end to child marriages — for educated women mostly have fewer children.” He concludes, “We should all be able to agree on voluntary family planning as a cost-effective strategy to reduce poverty, conflict and environmental damage. If you think family planning is expensive, you haven’t priced babies” (11/2).
Longer Looks: Apology For A Death Sparked A Hospital’s Change
Today’s selections are from The Boston Globe Magazine, WBUR, Time, The Economist, National Review and American Medical News.
In a Nature News opinion piece, James Shelton, science adviser for USAID’s Bureau for Global Health, discusses media coverage of recent findings from the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases showing that women’s use of hormonal contraception (HC) may increase the risk of HIV acquisition or transmission. “Whether HC influences HIV risk is a serious concern, and has been the subject of numerous studies. But these studies have been observational and not randomized, and thus potentially biased by who chooses to use HC,” Shelton writes. He uses “causality criteria laid down by British epidemiologist Austin Bradford Hill” to analyze the results, adding, “I find the evidence far from persuasive.”
Nicaragua’s Abortion Law Becomes Issue In Presidential Election
“Nicaragua is heading for presidential elections, and among the issues dividing people in this mostly Catholic country is abortion,” with advocates marching in the streets of the capital Managua to show support for overturning a ban on therapeutic abortions that was instituted five years ago, Al Jazeera reports. “With one of the highest maternal mortality rates in Latin America, Nicaragua is one of the few countries in the world that bans therapeutic abortions,” the news agency notes (Newman, 11/2).
Kenyan Company Receives WHO Prequalification For Generic ARV
“The cost of HIV/AIDS medicine is expected to drop by 30 percent in Kenya, enabling more people to access life-prolonging drugs, after the World Health Organization (WHO) gave the green light to a local company manufacturing generics, The Star newspaper reported on Wednesday,” AlertNet reports. Universal Corporation received WHO prequalification status for its generic combination antiretroviral Lamozido, which “will enable the company to bid for international tenders to supply drugs to governments and non-governmental organizations, who in turn give them to people living with HIV/AIDS,” the news service writes (Migiro, 11/2).
Gates To Address G20 Leaders About Foreign Aid, Robin Hood Tax
Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is expected to tell G20 leaders on Thursday that tightening foreign aid budgets amid the current economic crisis “is counterproductive and pointless,” the Toronto Star reports. “‘Aid is a small investment that generates a huge return. Those are precisely the investments we should spare when it’s time to make cuts,’ he says in prepared comments seen by the” Star, according to the newspaper.
Global Fund, China Agree To Cut $95M From Grants For Health Programs In The Country
“The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced on Monday that it will withhold $95 million from the $270 million in grants it had planned to give China” after “months of discussion between the charity and Chinese officials,” China Daily reports (Shan, 10/31). Global Fund spokesperson Jon Liden “said … that during recent discussions, China moved to take over most training expenses and other costs that allowed the saving of about $95 million from unpaid grants,” the Associated Press writes (10/31).
“Unchecked environmental destruction will halt — or even reverse — the huge improvements seen in the living conditions of the world’s poorest people in recent decades,” the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) warns in its 2011 Human Development report, which was released on Wednesday, the Guardian reports (Carrington, 11/2). “[T]he annual report, titled ‘Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All,’ said that environmental sustainability can be ‘fairly’ reached if disparities in health, education, income and gender are addressed,” Xinhua writes (11/2). VOA News adds, “It says inaction on climate change and habitat destruction is jeopardizing health and the pursuit of higher income in developing countries” (Schlein, 11/2.)
First Edition: November 3, 2011
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports about a bipartisan group of lawmakers who are urging the super committee to consider “all options.”
Bloomberg News examines abortion laws in Latin America and writes that the region, “home to the world’s strictest abortion laws, may hold lessons for U.S. Republican presidential hopefuls who advocate a ban on the practice” in the U.S. According to Bloomberg, “A consequence of the laws, whatever the moral arguments, is that Latin American women have more ‘unsafe’ abortions per capita than women in any other region, according to the World Health Organization.” The article reports that the U.N. Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on Health Anand Grover recently stated that “[s]trict abortion laws ‘consistently generate poor physical health outcomes, resulting in deaths.'”
WHO’s Chan Tells Executive Board Reform Is Necessary Under Budget Constraints
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan on Tuesday at the opening session of the agency’s Executive Board special session on reform in Geneva “stressed that planned reforms are intended to make the agency more efficient as it strives to improve global health amid multiple challenges that have an impact on human well-being,” the U.N. News Centre reports (11/1). Chan said “proposed reforms would see the agency become more streamlined and deliver ‘measurable results’ at country level” and “acknowledged … that parts of the WHO had become rigid and unresponsive,” the Associated Press/CTV News writes. She “urged WHO’s 34 board members to safeguard the agency’s role as global health guardian despite growing competition and budget constraints,” according to the news agency (11/1).
Budget Experts Focus On Health Costs
Four well-known budget gurus testified Tuesday in a public super committee hearing, telling the panel they should raise revenues and overhaul expensive federal health programs in order to develop a budget compromise that will meet the $1.2 trillion, 10-year mandate.
Foreign Aid From U.S., Dozens Of Other Countries Makes The World ‘Better, More Prosperous And Safer’
In this Washington Post opinion piece, Bill Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, cites declines in global child mortality rates as an example of how development aid works, and writes, “I am giving a report Thursday to the heads of the Group of 20 (G20) governments, including President Obama, suggesting creative ways for the world to continue investing in development despite fiscal constraints.” Gates highlights three key ideas he hopes “become part of congressional deliberations over the coming weeks” — first, “programs funded by U.S. generosity have been a core component of this 50-year project of raising living standards around the world”; second, “development isn’t just good for people in poor countries; it’s good for all of us”; and third, “the United States is not doing development alone. We spend about one percent of our total budget on aid, as do dozens of donor countries.”
How The Health Law Shakes Out If High Court Overturns Individual Mandate
Politico examines this critical issue and offers scenarios of what might happen if the mandate is struck down. Meanwhile, in other health law implementation news, media outlets offer a range of stories, including reports on health exchanges, association health plans and how employers may view the health coverage landscape after 2014.
UNICEF Asks Donors To Fully Fund Request To Assist North Koreans Facing Malnutrition
“Millions of children and women of child-bearing age in North Korea face malnutrition which can leave them at higher risk of death or disease, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday,” Reuters reports. UNICEF urged donors to fill a funding gap to prevent a “nutrition crisis” in the country, the news agency states (Nebehay, 11/1). According to Agence France-Presse, “UNICEF had asked for $20.4 million for 2011, but has received just $4.6 million” (11/1).
“Nearly half of pregnant women do not get tested for syphilis in poor areas of southern China where the sexually transmitted disease has seen a resurgence, researchers said Wednesday” in a study published in the WHO’s November 2011 Bulletin, the Associated Press/Washington Post reports. Pregnant women with syphilis can miscarry, have stillbirths or their infants can have congenital defects, the news service notes. According to the AP, the study “found that more than 40 percent of about 125,000 mothers-to-be in Guangdong province were not tested for syphilis in 2008, mostly due to a lack of health facilities in rural areas.” The study noted that “several provincial and national programs to improve testing have been put in place” since the study was conducted, the AP writes (Wong, 11/1).
Synthetic Artemisinin Discovery Could Make Malaria Treatments More Affordable, Accessible
“Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the biotech start-up Amyris [have] developed a process to manufacture artemisinin, a crucial ingredient in first-line malaria drugs that until now had to be extracted from a natural crop called sweet wormwood,” PBS NewsHour reports. “The new semi-synthetic artemisinin … successfully entered the production phase through a public-private partnership with the drug company Sanofi-Aventis earlier this year” and “will hit the market beginning in 2012,” according to NewsHour. Olusoji Adeyi, who runs the affordable malaria medication program at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said the new formulation of artemisinin will help make better quality malaria treatments more affordable and increase access, NewsHour reports (Miller, 10/31).
VOA News Program Examines International Humanitarian Aid In Horn Of Africa
The VOA News audio program “Explorations” on Tuesday discussed international humanitarian aid in the Horn of Africa. The program features interviews with Kurt Tjossem, the International Rescue Committee’s regional director for the Horn of Africa and East Africa; Shannon Scribner, Oxfam America’s humanitarian policy manager; and Nancy Lindborg, USAID’s assistant administrator for the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance.
